The article is entirely unclear about whether she paid anything to Lambda School, or whether she currently owes anything to them.
> She took out $30,000 for its six- and 12-month computer science programs
"Took out" of where? Her bank account? Why would she be in an income-share if she paid $30,000 up front?
> for any student’s ISA payments to be activated ... landed a role leveraging skills learned at Lambda School that pays $50K or more in salary.
She has not earned anything from being a web developer. So it would appear she doesn't owe Lambda anything. Are they suing her?
btw, this story is notable in that, unlike the other cases brought by the NSLDN, this student opted out of the arbitration clause in her ISA and can therefore sue in civil court. This confers numerous advantages, including being able to compel discovery.
What would be actually interesting, and core to the story, but is of course entirely omitted from the article, is the alleged and actual placement rate.
A few points:
1. I'm surprised Bloom doesn't have an arbitration clause.
2. Bloom doesn't say what percentage of privates[a] get a job afterwards. I can't imagine any lawyer would put a guarantee in the contract.
3. Bloom fully refunds the tuition if you don't get a coder job in 365 days. Getting that education for free is a good deal, even if all you get is web dev code monkey 101. If you have 2 neurons to rub together you can extend that into learning other areas of programming. Although admittedly that's hard for a single mom, it's not Bloom's fault she's in that situation.
4. Were coder bootcamps so successful that the labor market is now well and truly saturated with juniors?
My estimation of the story is that the litigant is salty she didn't read the fine print and probably just isn't very talented. Learning how to program computers isn't an economic panacea, and it's hard. I got a CS degree and struggled to get a decent jobs for years. Maybe we'll see CS graduates sueing their universities if this litigation provails.
[a] Somehow graduate seems inappropriate terminology for a boot camp.
I don't really get the claim about misrepresenting their financial incentives.. Is there a lender in the middle that pays the school a lesser amount and assumes the risk? I can't imagine they qualify for a federal educational loan guarantee.
So I was looking for the text of the lawsuit, but the search turned up a person who closely matches the description of the plaintiff on LinkedIn (and not the lawsuit). I wish I could read the allegations because just going by her current and past employment, things look a little fishy.
I recently heard, I think on Planet Money, that a lot of places are moving away from ISAs because they have too much trouble collecting on them. People who hit it big afterward end up having remorse that they signed the ISA and try to get out from under. A suspicious part of me wonders whether that's going on here.
To be clear, I'm not saying that these boot camps are generally a good idea. I've been unfavorable about them on here for a while. But, if you do transition into a technical role after going to one, that would seem to be a success story, even if the role isn't a programmer role.
Honestly, bootcampers are on average pretty bad, but the weakest hires tend to come from some of these so-called "elite" universities. Graduates come out of ivory tower CS programs with heads full of empty theory and zero practical knowledge or good judgment. I would bring on a self-taught or even a bootcamp grad ahead of someone whose resume just has a big-name university and a string of academic acronyms after their name.
For people assuming this is typical of bootcamps, there have been many discussions and articles alleging lambda school is deceptive, and a scam. Relevant links below:
- https://www.businessinsider.com/lambda-school-promised-lucrative-tech-coding-career-low-job-placement-2021-10
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415017
- https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/lvi6mz/lambda_school_is_consistently_deceptive/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/qfjorv/lambda_school_promised_a_fast_and_cheap_path_to_a/
Good. 99% of coding boot camps are frauds making promises they can never keep and they know it. Most people can NOT code well ever. The economy can't possibly absorb having much more than 5% of the population being coders and that's unrealistically optimistic.
I don’t know about the allegations of the lawsuit, but something feels off to me: She clearly (based on her LinkedIn and personal website) went from a non-technical role to a role at Microsoft that explicitly requires someone to know how to code.
For-profit colleges and coding bootcamps, which inflate success metrics and charge too much. The best argument yet against libertarianism, although a libertarian society would not require so much credentials though.
undefined
undefined
undefined
undefined
one thing I love about programming computers is that its pure merit, has nothing to do with my gender, sexuality, race, marital status or parenting status. its orthogonal to all those things. the computer doesnt care, books dont care, etc. up to you when you sit down with them. anything is possible, just up to you
Sounds like a hit piece against Bloom Institute/Lambda school orchestrated by failing university administrators.
High paying jobs are hard to get. They are meant to be earned and not something that will be handed over in a platter.
Community colleges should really be filling this role not for-profit vultures preying on the poor and the desperate. Can't community colleges create an accelerated 1 semester boot-camp equivalent?
Does the $30K income sharing agreement mean that she has to pay $30K to the school once she starts working? And if that's after tax, then doesn't it mean she'll have to make around $50K to have $30K in after-tax income to pay back the school?